Traditional Indian culture is widely considered to be steeped in spiritual values and disdainful of practical studies or rigorous scientific theory. This dichotomy is largely false, and overlooks the immense contribution made by Indian scholars, even in pre-Roman times, to scientific enquiry of various sorts (including the amazingly sophisticated analysis of Sanskrit grammar, the ‘arabic’ decimal numeral system using zero and place-value, and atomic theory). Sankhya, ‘enumeration’, was an ancient system of cosmological analysis and a branch of study that for many centuries formed a major part of the curriculum for the education of cultivated Indians. In this talk Hanumatpresaka Swami explores the comparisons that can be made between the tradition stemming from Sankhya and principles running through western thought, with references from the Bhagavata purana and Bhagavad gita from the East and the cultural anthropology of scholars such as Carl Jung and E. T. Hall from the West.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER

Hanumatpresaka Swami (Professor Huber Hutchin Robinson) is currently a Sannyasin (senior monastic fellow) in the Bengali Vaisnava tradition of Sri Krishna Caitanya. Born January 1948 in Guam, Marianas Islands, he graduated first in Psychology from the University of California in 1970, became an Associate Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute in 1984 and is currently a Professor at Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru with its Institute for Oriental and Occidental Classical Studies (IECOO) and Senior Research Scholar with the North American Institute for Oriental and Occidental Studies (NIOS). He has had the honour of organizing events and presenting academic papers with Nobel Laureates, Governors of Indian States, National Science Councils and many other institutions.